Moby's last moments
by JustAWriterWannaBe
Summary: A moment in time when Rick explains to Kate about how "The White Whale" got it.


_**Chapter/Author's Note:**_  
I decided (with/after some encouragement) that this little snippet of a story deserved some air time of its own and so I sliced it out of Chapter 11 of my Frankenstory "Richard Talk to her" and did a minor bit of massaging it so that it can stand alone better.

* * *

"I have to ask you something." Castle says walking over to her in front of his desk and wrapping his arms around her waist interrupting her actions.

"Ask away." she says cheerily.

"Why don't you sit in my chair? You'll come in here and stand in front of my desk or maybe next to it but you won't work from behind it or sit there."

As an abrupt blush rises over her face. She glances at the chair behind his desk and then looks down to avoid his gaze. "I um..."

"I've noticed this more than once. You'll make yourself comfortable everywhere in this house, and you _should_, I encourage it but you seem to regard that _one_ thing as special in some way. It's not, and even _if_ it was sacred, it's not for _you_." he says punctuating the point by gently pointing to her by touching her shoulder with his finger. "I also see that it's not the power thing that you use on me about sitting in _your_ chair at the precinct. Come here." he says taking her by her hands and walks backward leading her around behind the desk. "Sit." he says but it is obviously a request.

"Aw come on Rick it's no big deal." she protests as she starts to sit but he recognizes a tiny hitch in her motion. "See, I'm sitting." she says in a way that makes him know she's still uncomfortable.

"Okay then. Let's see how long you can sit there before it gets to you. I'll sit on the couch across from you." He says with a knowing smirk.

"_Don't be childish!_" she snaps as she begins to stand up.

Quickly he stops her. "Uh uh! Don't get up. You sit there until we're finished."

Letting out a huff, she settles back down. "_Fine!_" she says as she pulls herself more behind the desk.

"Good. Now, what was it you were going to say when I first came in here?" he asks as he sits back on the couch enjoying the change in orbits.

Obviously uncomfortable she clears her throat and tries again, this time successfully able to carry on a conversation with him from behind his desk.

"It looks like it still feels strange to you." he observes after a few moments.

"Huh?"

"Sitting behind my desk."

"Well..." she hesitates for a long moment then lets out a bit of a sigh with a small smile "Okay, it is but _don't_ let that go to your head."

"It won't." after a beat, while still watching her face "Why does it feel so weird to you?" he asks gently.

"Um... because..." she trails off as she looks down at the desk, the closed laptop, the papers and folders, notepad with doodles and the framed pictures of him and Alexis. "Because this is where..." she groans and covers her face with both of her hands saying "I can't _believe_ I'm going to say this to you!"

Smiling and enjoying how much it obviously means to her, he waits for her to continue.

After a long pause while she is still hiding her face, she takes her hands down and fixes him with a stare. "There are days I _really_ could hate you." she says smiling, then after a short pause "Because _this_ is where the magic happens."

"You don't like peeking behind the wizard's curtain I gather. Don't worry. I won't let it spoil the magic for you."

"Thanks." she says looking around only marginally more comfortably.

"You _do_ know you're an integral part of the magic, right?" he asks.

"Well, sort of but not _here_, not behind _this_ desk." she says smiling back at him.

"Pull out the writing surface on your right there."

She sees a glint in his eyes that gives her pause but she does it anyway. As she pulls out the flat slide, she sees that underneath the glass surface are some pictures of her and him including the infamous goofy-looking Ryan photo of them in the break room having eye-sex. A photo of her and Alexis and another of her with Martha. There's a photo of the entire gang including Roy and Lanie at the Olde Haunt when he'd first purchased the place.

Softly she breaths "Oh my g..." and trails off.

"Yes, I pull that out while I'm working and when I'm just sitting there. It... I... um." clearing his throat he skips that part of the conversation and dives right back into his original train of thought. "I had made sure Ryan gave me the one of us in the break room and he also gave me that one of us dancing at his wedding. The other's are just random ones I've taken over time."

She moves in closer for a look at one of them. "Is this..."

"I was wondering how long it would take for you to see that one." he chuckles.

"How the hell did you get _that_?" she asks amazed pointing at the photo and looking at him for an answer.

"I haven't heard you that surprised at one of my clever tricks in a long time! That's a nice sound. The answer is, right after we finished that case and you walked away from me. I emailed Gina and asked who the photographer was at the party. I had him go through every single photo that he took to look for it. It wasn't there. I then got the list of everyone who attended from Gina and hired a temporary worker from a local secretarial agency to call every single one of them on the list to see if they had that photo. It actually took about three months because she could only call the people during reasonable business hours, leave messages, and wait for call backs. Then people had to search their photos."

"You've had it all this time and you never told me or shown it to me?"

"I felt almost stalkerish in getting it. That one has a special meaning specifically to _me_. Also, I didn't want to hear you complain that I did that."

"Why _did_ you do it?" she asks looking back at the photo.

"Because my dear Detective Kate Beckett, that photo was snapped just as you appeared and my life changed forever. That moment, captured there, frozen in time, is the beginning of the end for 'The White Whale'."

Without even thinking about it while staring at the photo she quips "Moby looks healthy enough to me."

With a wry smile he explains "That's the thing Kate, it's deceptive. The damn fool didn't know he was done for. What you see there is the moment that the fatal blow was struck. Nothing in my life would be the same again after that moment. There was no warning that _everything_ in my life would be so fundamentally affected. It is a simple moment in time that divides the 'before' and 'after' of my life, truly _the_ watershed moment. I originally wanted the photo because it was our first meeting but later on I realized what it truly represented and how important it turned out to be."

He looks at her and she's still staring at the photo taken that night when she went to take him in for questioning in the Tisdale murder. He can hear the wheels turning, the way she studies every detail of the photo. "Kate, the change in your life happened at a different time, that's why I never said anything about _that_ picture. I see that photo and..." his voice cracks and trails off.

She looks up at him sitting on the couch, tears welling in his eyes. The cheerful countenance, he wears through everything that goes on, has faded. He looks straight ahead into space and he fights to continue "I can remember that night vividly too. I remember preparing for that party and how truly exhausted I felt about _everything_. I had killed off Storm and I _just wanted to move on_. The only reason I was there was Gina told me that Black-Pawn would sue me for breach of contract if I didn't show up at the party. I didn't even care enough to fight it. I just went to get it over with. I got grief for not wearing a tie and not being shaved. Gina bitched about my killing off Storm a bunch of times, always the same complaints from her about it. _I could not have cared less._ All I had to do was spend a few hours signing books and women's ... well, you know... and then I could escape from that drudgery. Even signing women's chests didn't thrill me like it used to. Of course it was fun and I got a few dates from it but it was like emotional pop-corn. Zero content. Minor temporary pleasure. Zero memorable moments. I didn't even know what I was going to do when I killed off Storm, I just knew nothing was right. As a matter of fact, I was explaining all that to Alexis when you came up behind me, then, _kablooey_." he makes an 'explosion' motion with his hands.

She can see him fighting with the memories and she lets him get it out.

"When I see that photo, it's... it's a... token... like the tokens... that people get at AA meetings. It... is... that is... the delineation point for me. The life I had and don't ever want to go back to and the life I have now and will give everything to keep."

She pushes the slide back in, gets up and goes to kneel on the couch next to him. She wraps her arms around him and holds him tight. She whispers to him "Know what else?"

He just shakes his head afraid to speak.

"That guy was a _freakin' jerk_. Good thing he's gone too." she teases and feels him start to laugh at the joke.

Just as the mood returns to normal Alexis comes bounding through the open door and is taken aback at the tender moment she's obviously interrupted. "Aww geeze you two. I wonder if we can get a bell on the two of you..." and then the implications of what she's saying hits her "_Oh god! I need brain bleach!_ I'll never hear a bell ring the same again. Ewwww ICK!"

"Don't worry Pumpkin, nothing was going on. Kate was just regaling me with stories about how she thought I was a ruggedly handsome guy when we first met."

"Ignore him Alexis." Kate says standing up. "He's being a child _and_ delusional. _Again._"


End file.
